Re-evaluation of Priorities

Oolong teas aren't really promoted for inspiring mental clarity (for that, I prefer to suggest something with orange and sage), but when I ponder, I like to ponder with a hot cup of Phoenix Mountain Dan Cong in my hand (seriously, and all promotion work aside, this may well be my favourite tea, bar none). I find the layers to be charming when I'm reflecting without being excessively stimulating or distracting.

At any rate, while I'm sitting here drinking my Phoenix Mountain I'm contemplating the idea of systems, perched upon my unmade bed and shooting askance glances at the old pizza box on the dresser and trying to remember if it had any food in it or not when I put it there. It comes up because my white-trash side is resurfacing and I've been watching entirely too much Wife Swap (before you ask how that got started, I honestly assure you I haven't got so much of a sweet clue), and their favourite gimmick seems to be slapping together chaotic and obsessively-ordered families.

Now, it's funny, when it comes to my digital life or my work life, I'm obsessively organized. Misfiled files and pens in the wrong place honestly drive me nuts in their contexts, but for some reason, in my home life, I seem to be content to let things quite literally pile up. The choice of "seems" is quite appropriate, because it secretly drives me as batty as everything else.

Thing is, I've always had systems handed to me for work. Sure, I develop my own way of doing things, but it's always in the context of a proper system. The same goes for my computer - while I don't entirely use the windows default file hierarchy, I do at least work within its confines. If I had to design a file system from scratch I'd probably lose my mind, or wind up with a terribly inelegant "catch all" folder.

I spend a surprising amount of my down-time trying to think of better ways to organize this house, but it's a daunting task, and one to be made more complicated by the impending move of my room-mate and the moving in of his replacement. Keeping the bedroom organized should obviously be a simple matter since no amount of room-mate swapping should change the state of my room.

And even with systems, there's no enforcement mechanism in place. Fortunately, my new room-mate is about as anal as I am so I can't see there being too many conflicts over cleaning... but it's getting the house cleaned first.

So I sit here, drinking my Dan Cong, and I suddenly come to realize that the obvious trick to implementing my system is going to be implementing it... which means most of my "down time" is going to be going into the process of cleaning, trashing, and organizing things. If anyone's wondering where I'm at the next few days, that's where.